Comment by spion | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spion | Hacker News Reader

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So, with TSX support in TypeScript, node and react-native, its now possible to write end-to-end type checked web and mobile applications (from database to templates). With full language service support (refactoring, intelligent navigation etc) that is also exposed via a standalone language service distributed with the compiler relatively easy to integrate with any editor. All that while seamlessly leveraging the entire node (and JS) ecosystem (just add a few definition files). And there even is a free, cross-platform editor that packages it all into one neat package: https://code.visualstudio.com/

Seriously, how cool is that? (Even though admittedly there are soundness issues with TypeScript, its still pretty damn amazing)

I have been experimenting with React development with TSX and I must say I finally feel like I can do web development in a way that isn't just trial and error. The soundness issues with TypeScript do crop up, but they happen at certain boundaries that if you're use to them, you'll scrutinize them harder. Mind you, this is the same scrutiny you are used to doing in plain Javascript.

With Flow and React DOM/Native, you already get complete type-checking across mobile, native, and web application.

For those wondering, more info here https://babeljs.io/docs/advanced/transformers/other/flow/

A key benefit to TypeScript over Flow is the very deep amount of IntelliSense and IDE support you get from it up front in your development process. It's very nice to have things like auto-completion and API documentation at your fingertips as you work.

Also, TypeScript has a fairly strong transpilation engine and can be a one-stop shop for most of your transpilation needs (contrasting to also needing something Babel or Traceur in your build and/or runtime stack, for instance, because you can just transpile ES6-like TypeScript directly to ES5).

Flow doesn't work on Windows though. However, Typescript works on Linux, OSX and Windows.

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